The first quarter of this year has been dominated by the mobile
market - in particular the success of the iPad launch, even though no
one has had the chance to use it yet, and Android positioning itself as a
worthwhile competitor the Apple's mobile OS.

Now it looks like Android is set to overtake the
iPhone sooner rather than later, at least according to this mobile
traffic graph from James
Governor's blog.

Android enthusiasts are bound to
be excited about this and they're right
to be. For the average Java developers, writing an Android application
is much easier than an iPhone application. With these statistics, it's a
fair assumption that the Android marketplace could generate a healthy
income for your application, once you have the right idea.

All
the iPad hype has helped to fuel tablet sales too - a market that never
quite found its feet before now. The biggest fuss in the Android space
is the WePad,
which looks like it's going to give the iPad a run for it's money.

To
me the most important thing isn't that Android overtakes iPhone, or
vice versa. It's that the software industry is an exciting and dynamic
industry to be in, as noted in a recent TechCrunch story
written by Marc Benioff:

The future of our industry now looks totally different than the
past. It
looks like a sheet of paper, and it’s called the iPad. It’s not about
typing
or clicking; it’s about touching. It’s not about text, or even
animation, it’s about video. It’s not about a local disk, or even a
desktop, it’s about the cloud. It’s not about pulling information; it’s
about push. It’s not about repurposing old software, it’s about
writing everything from scratch (because you want to take advantage of
the awesome potential of the new computers and the new cloud—and because
you have to reach this pinnacle). Finally, the industry is fun
again.

I would go as far as saying that now is the best time to be
developing software. There's so many technology opportunities out there,
and the rise of the mobile industry means that you can reach more
people than ever with your applications.

Learn more about Kotlin, a new programming language designed to solve problems that software developers face every day brought to you in partnership with JetBrains.